You remember the feeling. Being so deeply engulfed in an outdoor activity with the other neighbourhood kids, or having spent hours trying to set up Barbie’s dream house perfectly so that you could actually start playing. You remember gossiping on the corded phone upstairs (your own line too if you were lucky) to your BFF, or something as simple as spinning a new CD in the privacy of your room (again, your own only if you were lucky.) These simple pleasures of childhood were the rays of sunlight that brightened our days and kept us cozy in our constant battle against boredom. Happiness knew no enemy…until that clockwork holler from mom: DINNER IS READY!

Though I’m sure we can all agree, being summoned for dinner at our age now is a dream come true. Not having to worry about feeding ourselves because someone else has taken it upon him or herself to shop and prepare food for us is a world we’d all like to live in throughout this adult life. There was a time however when that call for attendance at the dinner table was equatable to a record scratching. It was the recess bell pulling the plug on your fun and yelling PARTY’S OVER and of course, that always happened just when things were getting good. 

As adults (young adults, adolescents or otherwise) we do still find ourselves battling other factors when the time to eat approaches. Playoff season, the ease of streaming quite literally anything, or even just the reels of your favourite guilty pleasure Instagram account are all roadblocks permanently placed in the way of us and the kitchen. They are each a devil sitting on our shoulder and redirecting us to the couch where we would surely be more comfortable and could consume both our sustenance and our content equally. 

Read that last sentence again. Consuming dinner while enjoying television simultaneously was the marrying of two important evening activities achieved through the monumental mid-century invention of the TV dinner tray. Though this now-problem-solving invention goes without praise of a brilliant mind (the inventor remains totally anonymous), TV dinner tables we’re the groundbreaking sprinkles atop the 1950’s invention; the television set. What we do know thanks to the National Museum of American History, is that only ten years into their invention nearly 90% of families—folks of all different social classes—owned the famous four piece plus stand TV dinner table set. 

Today, tv and dinner are pipe dreams we work toward throughout each day as we power through zoom calls and spreadsheets. We eagerly fantasize about satisfying our appetites while Bridgerton runs from one episode to the next but it doesn’t stop there. Weekends roll around and that dinner party that seemed like a good idea to host last week (half in the bag, lets be honest) is now something that needs to be delivered on. Between the precious few hours weeknights afford us of leisure time, and the too-small-for-sidedishes dining table you’re working with when more formal dining is in play, TV dinner tables are a non-committal (they collapse and roll into oblivion after use!) gift given by the midst of our century that remain an under the radar solution for anyone.